Katagoshi no Koibito (Summer 2007, TBS)
Episode 3
16 minutes 37 seconds

An employee staffing agency confirms that the main
character has Kanji Kentei Level 2.

LOL.....the first time I've ever heard anyone mention
the Kanken in a TV show. So I guess that means
we should all strive for Level 2....... :-)

I spoke to some Japanese people about it and I was surprised by how strongly they felt that the test was a waste of time. The person I was speaking to teaches kanji to kids at school and his kanji knowledge seems amazing to me so I asked him if he'd ever thought about taking the kanken. As I said, I was surprised by his reaction.

I don't know much about the test but it sounds like it's really for people who are fascinated by kanji, rather than if you want to learn them for practical reasons.

wrightak Wrote:I don't know much about the test but it sounds like it's really for people who are fascinated by kanji, rather than if you want to learn them for practical reasons.

Sounds like your friend really has something against the test. Perhaps that many kids are pushed into doing it by their parents? Or some other reason.

But I would suggest that he has something against the test other than its practical value. I mean, in the junior high school I work at (and I imagine practically all JHSs across Japan) kanji are taught in pretty much kan ken order.

And from personal experience, studying for the tests has definitely improved my kanji knowledge. My fascination with kanji only goes so far, I want to use the sukkers. Studying for kan ken tests is one of the things that will get me there.

I reckon you should dig deeper and find out what's going on.

One thing that is apparent though is that not many teachers at all (in my city anyway) have taken the test.

In a large way, I recognize the kanken tests as a money making scheme. You've got to pay the testing fee, and then of course if you want to do well, you've gotta buy the ステップ books, and those are constantly reminding you to buy other books.

There is the issue of the tests being a little unnatural. The questions come from a relatively small, predictable set, and someone who spends some time with the prep materials can do a lot better than someone with superior kanji knowledge who hasn't used them.

I think the tests are a good motivator for me, but I think preparing for them should mostly be about filling in knowledge for kanji you already know pretty well, and not for learning their readings and compounds from scratch. Probably the best time to prepare for a certain level is when you know about 70% of that level's set of ~300 pretty well, and are somewhat familiar with the remaining 30%. Any less than that and you're banging your head against a wall. I believe most kanji knowledge should come from reading and these prep books should be used to fill in the gaps.

Yeah, I agree with Jimmy.

That's pretty much true of all certification exams. They are money making machines that often have no practical relevance. Relevant experience is far more useful that any certification exam. But the fact remains, that the important of the exam is in obtaining the piece of paper.

In some cases, having or not having a certification can be critical in something like a job search. For example, you could be much better at Japanese than some other gaijin, but he/she has JLPT Level 1 and you don't. And that might make the difference.

Ironically, you can also look at the JLPT as a barrier that companies can put up as an excuse to NOT hire foreigners. It's a pain in the ass exam (Level 1), with a ton of useless vocab that you'll never use in real life.

I also wonder how Kanken Level 2 might look for a gaijin. Supposedly, a college educated Japanese should be able to get Level 2 with a moderate amount of studying.
And since it's an exam aimed at native Japanese, it's even more impressive, I think.

Btw, Los Angeles has the only Kanken test center in America with the computer based test. You use a pen tablet to write the kanji. And you can take the test 6 days a week all year round.

Well, its pretty much the equivalent of adults showing off their piece of paper that says they passed a spelling test. Its nice that you can spell, but *especially* in this electronic day, it would matter very little to most people. Many japanese people supposedly cant write THAT many kanji (i mean they can write way more than me, im sure), and many english speakers cant spell to save their lives (for example, me). In fact, the ability to recall kanji at such a high rate is pretty useless, compared with spelling. If you forget one, its easy to just spell it out in hirigana, where as in english if you dont know how to spell a word, your just out of luck. However, it makes sense to have some sort of way to measure fluency of foreigners, besides just a 10 minute job interview..